Bow Valley College

Gateway to the future┬áBow Valley College is designing its future into its new campus, Jenn Monroe reports. In considering the design of its renovated and expanded main campus, Bow Valley College (BVC) wanted to make sure key components of its mission were represented. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre not trying to make the building into a showcase,ÔÇØ says Bernard Benning, vice president of campus development. ÔÇ£There are no towers and no unbelievable artwork. ItÔÇÖs very comprehensive and businesslike. We want our students to get in, get out and move into the world of work.ÔÇØ Working with GEC Architecture, the Calgary-based college came up with four guiding design principles to allow BVC to continue to be a gateway to education, a place of prominence, a place of diversity and a catalyst of interaction. Benning says the collegeÔÇÖs two buildings, located across the street from each other, will create a physical gateway as people drive into Calgary. ÔÇ£It also plays off the idea that an education is a gateway to your future,ÔÇØ he says. With students from more than 75 countries, BVCÔÇÖs diversity is evident and encouraged. ÔÇ£We have a diversity week each semester,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£We encourage our students to bring the positive elements of their backgrounds and showcase those to other students. We didnÔÇÖt want to lose out on pieces like that, so we used them as background for the design.ÔÇØAs for prominence, that was simple. ÔÇ£We wanted to make sure the college was not going to be a Quonset hut,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£The city is trying to find some definition to the east side, and the college is a bridge between the downtown business community and the rest of the community.ÔÇØ BVC will become even further connected to Calgary as the public library is planning to locate a world-class library on the site. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs almost an educational precinct idea,ÔÇØ Benning notes.Bow Valley College offers a number of certificate and diploma programs but is best known as a leader in its English as a second language training. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre a comprehensive community college,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£Our students not only learn the English language but the culture of work here. If you come from Romania, you may have a good degree in chemical engineering but not know how chemical engineers over here work. ÔÇ£We really try to get people ready for the workplace,ÔÇØ he continues. ÔÇ£Almost every one of our programs has a community advisory committee to provide input to the programs, and most programs have work placement associated with them.ÔÇØ In helping its students meet the challenges of the business world, BVC has faced a few of its own in the first phase of its expansion project. The plans called for a redevelopment of the existing building, including: reclaiming 50,000 square feet of the existing building and significantly increasing the efficiency of each floor; upgrading the infrastructure with a new, more energy-efficient system; and creating more classrooms, expanding its learning resource services and improving the student life spaces for 7,000 full-time students.ÔÇ£Before we embarked on this we did some traveling and visited a number of schools in Ontario, since they have more diversity than we do,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£That gave us some samples of what we wanted to see, what were going to be some of the key principles in this new building.ÔÇØ BVC also consulted its faculty and staff for ideas and found that what was wanted most was light and good air. To meet this request, the faculty and staff areas were designed as an open concept along the perimeter of the building with much natural light. The coordinators elected to have their offices placed in the interior spaces of the building.Once that was decided, the college began its ÔÇ£decampingÔÇØ studies. ÔÇ£We needed to see how much space we would really be able to free up for construction at any given time,ÔÇØ Benning says. The goal was to continue to hold classes during the renovation. To give the construction team close to the equivalent of a floor at a time, the college leased space in another part of the city (accessible by light rail) to serve 350 students. Basically, the existing building was designed as an inverted pyramid (less gross area at the bottom), and the college is transforming it into a pyramid. ÔÇ£We had a tremendous amount of mechanical and electrical work that had to be incorporated into the first three floors,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£There is no one model that says this is the way it should be done. That became challenging for the contractor [Stuart Olson Construction Inc.] and the architect.ÔÇØThe bottom floor was expanded to have more area than any of the floors above it. In the process, the college learned it was in both a floodplain and an earthquake zone. To protect against flooding, it had to bring the bottom floor up three feet; to protect against an earthquake (which are rare in Calgary), it had to set sheer walls down to the bedrock on all four sides of the building. Then it discovered weaknesses in the core bell and had to bring those up to current building code requirements. ÔÇ£It has taken up more time than we thought it would,ÔÇØ Benning says of the work on the lower floors.When complete, the seven-story building will have facilities, the cafeteria and the library all located on the first three floors. The top four will house more direct educational spacesÔÇöclassrooms and labs. ÔÇ£The top four floors are moving along more or less the way they were supposed to,ÔÇØ Benning adds. ÔÇ£The bottom three floors had huge complexity, and we did this without emptying the building.ÔÇØAcross the street, preparations are being made for the construction of the new campus building. It is on the site of a former courthouse that was recently taken down. In addition to the city library, this new building will include a day care center and eventually the registration office, the continuing education office and the bookstore.It also will contain space for further future expansionÔÇö95,000 square feetÔÇöwhich will be leased out until the college needs it. ÔÇ£We have no land,ÔÇØ Benning says. ÔÇ£The footprint weÔÇÖre on is our footprint.ÔÇØ ÔÇô Editorial research by Dan Finn.